Monthly Archives: September 2020

A sunny day in Charleston and a flood: What that tells us about climate change and the future – Charleston Post Courier

Posted: September 28, 2020 at 11:18 am

1. Sun

Under a perfect blue sky, Charleston began to flood.

At noon Monday, the tide pushed toward the dunes. It filled the areas rivers and marshlands. It rose higher along The Batterys sea wall.

Then, like an overfilled cup, the Atlantic poured in.

By high tide, wed set yet another 8-foot-plus tide, another high-water mark. It was among the 30 highest tides here since scientists have been keeping track. And that includes past hurricane surges.

Monday's sunny day flood happened because of a combination of factors, and some of these are normal: The moons gravitational pull would have made tides higher than average no matter what. And the passing of Hurricane Sally also piled waves onto the coast.

Other factors arent normal at all.

A rapidly warming planet has accelerated rising sea levels in multiple ways. Sunny day floods like Monday's once were rare, but seas are a foot higher now than a century ago. And in a place called the Lowcountry, every inch matters.

The Post and Couriers "Rising Waters" project is documenting the immediate impacts of these accelerating climate change forces such as a flood here on a day with no rain.

These accelerating forces are playing out here and against a larger backdrop: a summer of climate chaos across the world.

But first, our sunny flood.

Vehicles tread through flooded water at the intersection of Hagood and Line on Monday, Sept. 21, 2020 in Charleston. Andrew J. Whitaker/Staff

A tidal flood is an incremental event, one that creeps up on you. By 11 a.m. Monday, we were at the brim.

Waves ate away at dunes on barrier islands. Seawater poured through Breach Inlet, the gap between the Isle of Palms and Sullivan's Island. It filled the marshes behind those sandy barriers. It swamped the marsh grass fronds.

Charleston sits squarely in the Lowcountry and is no stranger to chaos from flooding rain storms.

But when tides pass the 7-foot mark like this, land trades places with the Atlantic whether there's rain or not.

Through the 1980s, this typically happened just five times a year usually when a hurricane pushed waves ashore, such as Hugo, the record-holder with a 12.5-foot crest.

But last year, Charleston had a record 89 days when the water breached that 7-foot level. So far this year, weve had 42 flooding tides. The past week alone had 7-footers at least once every day. More brimming tides are expected this week.

And they'll get worse in the future as global sea levels increase. Already, Charleston is on a list of the eight most vulnerable cities in the United States to these forces, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment.

And a study published Friday by University of South Carolina researchers uncovered new evidence that the city's vulnerability is accelerating.

In the past, scientists thought sea levels rose in a straight line, like a slightly upward-tilting seesaw.

But the new USC study and other research shows that seas are rising faster every decade, said James Morris, a biology professor and co-author of the analysis. Graph it and instead of a straight line you have an upward curve an accelerating pace.

Because of this acceleration, our floods will last longer, from about six hours a day now during a tidal flood to 10 hours by 2050.

"As the number of hours go up, so does the disruption," Morris said. "And we'll see significant areas of the city flood that don't flood today."

As the water rose Monday, the effects soon rippled across the city.

A higher than normal tide floods Ashley Avenue near MUSC in downtown Charleston on Monday, Sep. 21, 2020. Matthew Fortner/Staff

In downtown Charleston, salt water poured into streets around White Point Garden. Officers put up barricades on Lockwood Boulevard as the Ashley River merged with the surrounding neighborhood. It coursed down Calhoun Street by the Medical University of South Carolina's new Children's Hospital. Water filled the City Marina parking lot. On Barre and Wentworth streets, it oozed from the soil.

About 30 minutes before high tide, contractor John Jamison ran out of the house he was working in on Line Street to move his white truck. He was surprised at how quickly the water was rising at Line and Hagood streets, just north of the city's sprawling medical district. And while he knew flooding was a problem in the area, he hadnt even thought to wear boots on Monday.

Look at how fast its coming in, he said. I wonder who thought to build this here, he said, gesturing to the Gadsden Green homes, a public housing complex behind him.

The housing complex has long been plagued by flooding that spills out of tidally influenced Gadsden Creek, across the street. Rain makes the situation far worse. But on a bright day with a blue sky rippling in reflections of the murky water, a high tide was about to create a mini lake that sprayed the undersides of motorists' cars with salty water.

When it rains, you should see how it pours in here. You might as well build a bridge over this thing, Jamison said.

Charleston has lost ground for a century against the Atlantic. Sea levels here are rising, in part, because of subsidence, the natural sinking of the land. But climate change is a bigger factor, and one thats driving changes in unexpected ways.

We've known for more than 150 years that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. And, because we've burned so much fossil fuel, our atmosphere now has 42 percent more CO2 an increase unlike anything the Earth has seen in hundreds of thousands of years.

The atmosphere has warmed as a result, and the United States saw the effects this summer. Death Valley hit 130 degrees. Scorching heat melted one record after another across the region. At least 452 cities had among the warmest summers on record. At least 55 cities had their hottest one ever.

In 2020, many cities saw their hottest summers on record or had top-10 hottest summers. ClimateCentral/Provided

The heat waves set the stage for the cataclysmic wildfires across the West. A town in Siberia that has been dubbed the coldest places in the northern hemisphere hit 100 degrees, possibly the hottest temperature ever recorded above the Arctic Circle. Two glaciers in Antarctica are teetering on collapse, and, like giant ice cubes thrown into the cup, that could raise global sea levels in feet instead of inches.

So far the ocean has absorbed much of the heat human beings produce heat injected equivalent to four atomic bombs going off every second.

But now ocean temperatures are rising. Water naturally expands when it gets hotter and spills onto more land than it would otherwise.

Warmer oceans also fuel more intense and frequent storms. And 2020 has been one for the record books. We blew through an alphabet of 23 named storms and are now going through the Greek alphabet. On Friday, Tropical Storm Beta formed in the Gulf of Mexico.

Six weeks are left in the hurricane season.

Still, with none currently on Charleston's horizon, the ocean moved inland Monday.

Server Alexandra Schroettner walks through saltwater that has risen over the patio at Saltwater Cowboys as she serves guests lunch on Shem Creek Monday, Sept. 21, 2020, in Mount Pleasant. The restaurant has been dealing with the high tide filling water through the majority of their patio several days. Some servers bring their own boots after learning from experience but the restaurant also keeps a stash of boots on hand for employees for king tide events. I think its fun. Its somewhat exciting. Especially with boots on. said Schroettner who splashed around in bright yellow boots serving customers. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff

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It doesnt really put out the welcome mat, said Sarah Fitch, vice president of Mount Pleasant Seafood on Shem Creek, glancing through the glass door at the water creeping into the parking lot.

Outside, the sky was blue and clear, but high tide was approaching. Part of the parking lot that serves the seafood business and several restaurants already had turned into a lake.

Mount Pleasant Seafood gives out free tide charts, but they arent just for fishing. Fitch uses hers to plan trips to the Charleston peninsula, where she attends church at St. Matthews.

If somebody says they are from out of town, well give them a tide chart, she said. The locals would probably know to schedule their time around it.

Standing behind the seafood counter, with a face mask on to protect against coronavirus, Fitch said sunny-day flooding has been getting more frequent.

I dont know if its global warming, infrastructure or something else," she said.

Global warming has had an unexpected effect on a powerful river in the ocean 60 miles offshore: the mighty Gulf Stream.

It flows with so much force that it pulls water away from the coast, lowering our sea level by as much as 3 feet.

But a growing body ofevidence suggests that climate change has gummed up that current. A slower current means high sea levels along the East Coast.

Researchers at Old Dominion University recently published a new study that analyzed sea level trends since 1900. They found an unprecedented slowdown in the Gulf Stream since 1990 one that couldn't be explained by seasonal variations, said Tal Ezer, a professor of ocean sciences at Old Dominion University who led the study.

Ezer's previous work had shown that hurricanes, including Hurricane Matthew in 2016, could temporarily put a kink in the Gulf Stream, a kink that led to higher tides from the Carolinas to Virginia. He had an inkling that Hurricane Dorian had done so in 2019; the storm followed a similar track as Matthew's and was among the most powerful on record, clipping Charleston.

Ezar discovered that the Gulf Stream slowed for more than a month and a half after Hurricane Dorian had passed, raising sea levels along the East Coast.

"I was somewhat surprised how long this impact lasted."

City of Charleston Police Sgt. Chris Adams sets up a blockade at the corner of South Battery and East Battery Street to keep cars from driving through water Monday Sept. 21, 2020, in Charleston. Gavin McIntyre/Staff

By 12:15 p.m., high tide, traffic slowed to a crawl around the medical district. Half a mile inland, water pooled by Cannon Park as sunbathers stretched out on a blanket. The water crested at 8.03 feet, and when it gets this high, the story isn't about drainage. It's about inundation from the sea.

By the Low Battery wall, brown, murky water sloshed in waves against its ramparts, coming perilously close to the top as the sea spilled onto the roadway from drains around the corner. Tourists stood around snapping pictures of cars passing through, throwing up high sprays, as Charleston police officers waded in to set up barriers at the intersection of East and South Battery.

James Gathers cradled a fishing pole in his hands as he tried to explain this odd phenomenon to a pair of out-of-town visitors. Hed felt drawn there Monday morning to fish for trout, but had only caught a feeling of disappointment.

Gathers grew up in Awendaw and has spent his 62 years around the Charleston area. He contends city officials should have seen this moment coming years ago and done something to help fix it rather than shovel money into various other projects to appeal to tourists. He wonders where the city will be in 10 years if action isnt taken soon.

Greed has caused this city to lack. A lot of people have been rubbing money when they should have been spending it on things to make it better, he said. "Its a beautiful city, but we need to do something now to save this place we say we love.

At the City Market, tourists maneuvered strollers and wheelchairs around the flooding. The guide of a horse carriage tour urged her guests to look at how the bottom few bricks of the market buildings are darker, a sign of how often the water rises around them.

Margaret Smith has worked in a T-shirt stand in the City Market for 24 years. She was one of the vendors separated from her customers by a moat that grew around some souvenir stalls. Business was going great before this, she said. Now nobody can cross.

She knows the routine by now: smile and be friendly, but encourage pedestrians to come back in an hour or so, when water welling up long after the high tide might have receded. A newly installed drain was evacuating some of the ponding, but in other places, puddles were still spreading and merging together.

The citys tried (to fix the problem), Smith said. I just wish it wouldnt flood.

A carriage tour makes its way down North Market Street in flooded water on Monday, Sept. 21, 2020 in Charleston. Andrew J. Whitaker/Staff

Further up the peninsula, Shawn Parks shook his head as he watched the floodwaters pool beneath his Jeep and circle his home on North Hanover Street. He'd already lost a low-riding Honda to tidal floods that chewed up its chassis and rotted out the joints with their salty brine. And each year it seems to get worse.

Parks has lived in the spot for 20 years. It's quiet and close to his job at the port. But the construction of a high-rise condo and office complex next door on Cool Blow Street paved over land that used to absord some of the rising tides and runoff from heavy downpours. Now, the waters regularly swamp the road outside his door and surround his home, turning his back yard into a small brackish lake replete with dead sea birds and other ocean treasures. So he diligently checks the tides and keeps pairs of heavy rubber boots in his home and vehicle to guarantee he'll be able to get where he needs to go.

"Because when I come home, I never know what I am going to find," he said, chuckling grimly. "I always wanted a pool in the back yard, but I'm afraid of what I might be in there."

On Folly Beach, Jeanette Halberda took a break from her run to watch tidal water spew out from a grate.

This is unusual, Halberda said, who has lived in the beach community for the past eight years.

Halberda said she is optimistic about human ingenuity but is concerned about the future.

I have hope in the human species, she said. I hope things will change so whats occurring environmentally won't be as damaging. But I think were late in the game.

After a few more moments, Halberda turned and continued her run, clutching weights in either hand, the submerged road to her back.

Stratton Lawrence carries a paddle board across the street from his house through a flooded East Cooper Avenue on Folly Beach to take advantage of an unusually high tide on Monday, Sept. 21, 2020. Lauren Petracca/Staff

Monday's sunny day flood was abnormal when placed in a historical context, but it's also a taste of the future.

In the USC study, Morris and his colleague Katherine Renken calculated that Charleston's sea level will be a foot higher within about 30 years, the life of many a mortgage.

Girding the city against tide levels that approach something akin to a hurricane surge will be a monumental undertaking. In his paper, Morris stepped outside the scientific arena.

"There's no way the population of Charleston can pay to protect the city on its own," he said.

He urged city and state leaders to consider enacting an additional hospitality tax.

But call it a climate tax instead.

"Humans have taxed the Earths climate," he wrote in his paper, "and the time has come for a climate tax in order to insure human welfare."

Glenn Smith, David Slade, Chloe Johnson and Stephen Hobbs contributed to this report.

This special report is part of an ongoing series examining the dire threat flooding presents to our region, which faces a climate crisis driven by rising seas, record-breaking rainfall and swamping tides. With a mix of breaking news and deep investigative reporting, this series aims to document the crippling effects of flooding on peoples lives and the greater Charleston economy as this creeping threat unfolds in real time. Look for more from this series in the coming months, including stories that will be part of the Pulitzer Center'sConnected Coastlines reporting initiative.

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How America Covered Up Its Germ Warfare Program | HuffPost

Posted: at 11:17 am

This article is part of a series called How to Human, interviews with memoirists that explore how we tackle lifes alarms, marvels and bombshells.

A few years ago, Nicholson Baker was doing research for his book about the destruction of newspapers by libraries in a library when he came upon a book about Americas use of biological weapons. The authors of the book spent years trying to prove that the United States had conducted biological warfare during the Korean War, including the dropping of insects tainted by disease. It was all horrifying stuff not taught in history class, and Baker was shocked.

How could it be that the United States was doing such terrible things? Its the question that drove him to research and write Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act, which comes out Tuesday.

Researching the book sent him into a warren of government tunnels in search of documents that proved America was guilty of developing and using biological weapons. He used the Freedom of Information Act to acquire such documents, but the government wasnt always compliant in getting them back to him. Indeed he received many pieces of paper with redacted words, sentences and paragraphs, sometimes in black rectangles, other times in white, depending on the government agencys preference. This led him to file more FOIA requests in which hed ask for the redacted words to be revealed.

He still has FOIAs out there waiting to be returned to him, and he could be waiting decades more. Since life moves a lot faster than the government, Baker found a way to tell the story now. He decided to keep a diary in which he could spend several weeks writing what he learned. Isnt that what historians do? They sit down to write what they know based off of the evidence they have on hand.

In the end, he is now on a quixotic mission, hoping the government will declassify everything older than 50 years old. He believes, If we could learn from our mistakes and our successes, then I think we can maybe move forward about things that are happening right now.

HuiffPost spoke with Baker via a Google Hangout and FaceTime earlier in July. This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.

Would you describe what FOIA is and how it came to be?

FOIA [pronounced FOY-a] stands for the Freedom of Information Act, and its a glorious law that took a long time to come into being. It was something dreamed up by congressman John Moss. He had this idea in the middle of the 1950s that there was too much that was happening in the federal government that was not knowable. You cant have consent of the governed unless the governed know whats actually happening.

He started this long process, and he had hearings, and he had resistance. The Justice Department didnt like the idea and the newspapers did like the idea. It took him 10 years, and finally in 1965 this act came in. It said that anybody can ask to see anything; they have to put it in writing, and then in 20 days, that particular agency has to give some kind of response.

It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and he did not want to sign it, but it had to be signed. It had some ups and downs; there was a moment where it was very powerful, where suddenly it dislodged a lot of things that had happened in the 50s. Suddenly people thought, Oh my God, you did that? Then the Reagan administration changed the rules radically, and said that the CIAs operational files this was specifically about the CIA were going to be off limits. That meant basically all the stuff that is actually interesting that the CIA does, you werent going to be able to learn anything about it. Operations just means secret, sneaky, clandestine things that people do in other countries, that kind of thing.

Theres been ups and downs over the years, and gradually its gotten harder and harder to get things from federal agencies. Basically whats happened is that government agencies want to shield themselves from scrutiny.

I fully understand that, they want some privacy to do whatever they want to do. What is driving this book is that they want to keep private, keep secret stuff that happened 60 or 70 years ago, so long ago that its of historical interest and importance, but cannot possibly affect national security.

Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act, by Nicholson Baker

What was your goal for this book?

It took a lot of work to write this book; I put my heart and soul and liver and onions into it, and Im just hoping that it could lead to a kind of decision, a blanket decision to declassify everything thats over 50 years everything, just everything.

Just let people see what the government was doing, at least that. Thats the beginning, because if we could learn from our mistakes and our successes, then I think we can maybe move forward about things that are happening right now.

Toward the end of your book you describe a deep frustration in one of your diary entries, and you say you want to sue the American government, that if you could be armed with $20 million, youd be able to open everything up.

Yeah, I have these fantasies. I successfully, oddly enough, sued the San Francisco Public Library, because they didnt want to release the list of the books that theyd gotten rid of. They got rid of about a quarter of a million books when they moved to a new library, and the librarians came to me and said that this was a really strange, secret thing that happened. I put in a Freedom of Information request, and they said no, so I then found a lawyer, a Freedom of Information lawyer who did it pro bono, and they released the list.

I just think that it would be so great to sue the federal government and then use $20 million to scan everything that was released to the National Archives. Everything older than 50 years, just start scanning it and do it. It actually would be a nice employment project because youd have people coming in. It would be a WPA kind of effort to say, Were going to be able to look at our own countrys history.

Could you describe the main theme of the book, and what you were trying to uncover?

There are two things that interested me. One was I wanted to know what happened in a fraught time in the past, so theres that, but then I also wanted to know how people actually truthfully think about history. Thats why I wrote it as a diary. When you get up in the morning and youre trying to write the history of anything, maybe its of the Bronx in 1910 or something, you also have to eat a bowl of cereal and talk to your wife or husband, or students if youre a teacher, I mean, you have a whole life.

What was the spark that made you want to go looking for biological warfare?

It came out of the book I wrote about libraries. I was at the University of New Hampshire library; I was in the middle of writing this book about the fact that there had been a complete clean-out of beautiful newspapers and a replacement of them with microfilm, and there was this book on the shelf that was by these two guys, Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, and it had a pink fly on the cover it was really kind of a lurid cover: it said, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea.

Now, I dont know anything about that at this point. Im standing there, I pull the thing down, thinking, Well, Ive been reading about all this weird Cold War stuff in connection with this library, so let me just get a little bit up to speed on the Cold War. I started looking at it, and there were lists of the diseases that the United States government thought were important to study and to intensify and to find ways to put into bombs and figure out how to make them more virulent.

I was really troubled, but also then I saw on this list, it was this list of diseases, and one of them was coccidioidomycosis, which is a very long word that I still dont really know how to spell. My grandfather was a pathologist and he studied coccidioidomycosis because its a fungal disease, and he was a fungal disease pathologist and thought, By God, I know that disease. I cannot believe that the American military wants to make people sick with this horrible disease that gets in peoples lungs and gives them lesions, its a very slow-acting disease.

I just thought I want to know more about this. I read this book, and I liked these guys on paper. They had managed to declassify huge amounts of stuff, because it was in a sort of golden age of declassification in the 80s, and I just thought, They have done a real service to American history to open it all up. I started reading reviews of their books, and the reviews were savage. It was amazing, they said it was shoddy scholarship, that these people have besmirched the historical profession, and their claim was that there was a gigantic germ warfare development program that was paid for by the Army and the Air Force, and that possibly the Americans had done what the Chinese and North Koreans said, and actually had dropped disease weapons on them.

That was the controversial thing. Most of the book is about the machinery of weapons research, and they do a beautiful job of that, and its fascinating. What people didnt like was the idea that these two men from Canada were charging that the United States had actually done this.

Anyway, I wrote a bunch of different books, and somewhere along the way I thought, I really want to just really get to the bottom of this story, because the two of them seemed a little bit like wounded men. They had worked on a book for close to 10 years, and it came out and every single person trashed it. I thought, Thats not fair. This book is a piece of institutional history of something. I just thought I would try to find out what actually happened, and I did.

When you write about some of your FOIA heroes in the book, its almost like youre a sports fan the way you revere them. Could you talk about who are your heroes in that department and what kind of impact theyve had on society?

The FOIA victory a tremendous, huge, ticker-tape parade kind of victory that nobody really knows about was one that just happened fairly recently. It has a long set of people involved, but it basically comes down to MuckRock, a very small, hardy band of really nice people for one thing, but who have set up this mechanism for asking for government documents using their website.

They made a request through a lawyer named Kel McClanahan, who is a very articulate, almost professorial kind of lawyer. But they requested from the CIA to have every bit of this digital database called the CREST databasethat just stands for CIA Records Search Tool.

The CREST database used to reside only in the National Archives in this one room; they had these four chairs, and it was a completely air gap, super secure cluster of terminals. And there was surveillance and your every keystroke was recorded. This CREST database, mind you, was completely what they call sanitized, meaning that the documents had all already been redacted. But in order to use the database, you had to physically go to College Park, Maryland, and sit in this room.

It was really a way of keeping historians from learning about the past. So [MuckRock] said, Give us the whole thing in electronic form. We dont want paper. Just give us the whole thing. Its all been declassified. So were not asking for you to declassify anything further, just give it to us.

And [the CIA] said, No, that would be burdensome and refused because its classified material. So this giant collection of declassified materials suddenly becomes classified material. That didnt make any sense, so the lawyer brought suit and there was this tremendous back and forth where the CIA said it was going to take I think they first said it was going to take 28 years to go through this collection and then they thought about it and said, No, no, itll only take six years, or something like that.

Finally this ex-CIA employee, whom I interviewed, got into it. Hed had a rough time with the CIA, because hed asked while he was [still] employed by the CIA for something controlled by the CIA not a good idea. So he testified that the whole thing could be put on an external $60 Staples drive and the whole process would take a day.

When he did that, the CIA just folded. And suddenly, I dont know if its millions of pages, its an enormous horde of stuff, became publicly available to anyone in the world. This happened in 2017. So just as I was sort of embroiled in one version of this book, a version that failed, suddenly Im typing. Im looking up keywords on the CIAs own website, thinking I should check it, and the words like BW, which stands for biological warfare, or specific diseases, brucellosis and stuff. And suddenly, instead of there being no hits, it suddenly would be lots of hits for crop diseases in the Soviet Union and all kinds of stuff. The thing that was mind-blowing was one of the set of hits was Korean War records, the agency that was the precursor to the National Security Agency.

So all of these people I admire tremendously because they just kept asking and kept asking and kept insisting until they got something. What they got was enormously valuable.

I wonder with everything being shut down, whats going to happen with the backlog of FOIA requests and what the government could be doing to make more documents available digitally.

I think one of the things that really should happen is that the National Archives budget should go up and there should be a more concerted effort to scan a lot of documents. Not throwing away the original documents, of course, but the dream would be that all of World War II records would be scanned and digitally searchable immediately in all kinds of ways we cant even predict.

Our understanding of World War II would be enriched because we would know things about people that are just unfindable, and we would make connections between things. Or World War I, which is really a fascinating era, or the 20s, my God, or the prohibition, all of that. All of that is just waiting to be opened up.

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SpaceX pops Starship tank on purpose in explosive pressure test – Space.com

Posted: at 11:17 am

SpaceX just popped another Starship test tank.

The Starship SN7.1 tank was destroyed on purpose Tuesday night (Sept. 22) at SpaceX's South Texas facilities, during a pressure test designed to take the stainless-steel hardware to its bursting point.

SpaceX has performed several other such tests, including one this past June that blew the top off the SN7 tank. Such trials inform future iterations of Starship, the 100-passenger spacecraft Elon Musk's company is developing to get people to Mars, the moon and other cosmic destinations.

Related: SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy rocket in pictures

SN7.1's death clears the way for testing of the SN8 prototype, which could begin as soon as this weekend. If SN8 aces a series of checkouts and engine trials, it will attempt a 12-mile-high (20 kilometers) flight into the South Texas skies, Musk has said.

Two full-size Starship prototypes have already gotten off the ground SN5 and SN6, each of which got about 500 feet (150 meters) high during recent test flights. ("SN" stands for "serial number," in case you were wondering.)

The flights of both SN5 and SN6 were powered by just a single Raptor engine. SN8 will have three Raptors, as well as a nose cone and control-improving body flaps, further accoutrements that its predecessors lacked.

The final Starship will have six Raptors, which will make the 165-foot-tall (50 m) vehicle powerful enough to launch itself off the moon and Mars, Musk has said. But Starship will need help getting off our bulkier Earth, so it will launch from here atop a giant rocket called Super Heavy, which will be powered by about 30 Raptors of its own.

Starship and Super Heavy are both designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. Musk envisions the duo cutting the cost of spaceflight dramatically so dramatically, in fact, that ambitious feats such as Mars colonization become economically feasible.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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Biological weapons and bioterrorism: Past, present, and future

Posted: at 11:17 am

Biological weapons. The phrase alone could send chills down the spine. But what are they? How do they work? And are we really at risk? In this Spotlight, we survey their history and potential future.

Sometimes known as germ warfare, biological weapons involve the use of toxins or infectious agents that are biological in origin. This can include bacteria, viruses, or fungi.

These agents are used to incapacitate or kill humans, animals, or plants as part of a war effort.

In effect, biological warfare is using non-human life to disrupt or end human life. Because living organisms can be unpredictable and incredibly resilient, biological weapons are difficult to control, potentially devastating on a global scale, and prohibited globally under numerous treaties.

Of course, treaties and international laws are one thing and humanitys ability to find innovative ways of killing each other is another.

The history of biological warfare is a long one, which makes sense; its deployment can be a lo-fi affair, so there is no need for electrical components, nuclear fusion, or rocket grade titanium, for instance.

An early example takes us back more than 2 and a half millennia: Assyrians infected their enemys wells with a rye ergot fungus, which contains chemicals related to LSD. Consuming the tainted water produced a confused mental state, hallucinations, and, in some cases, death.

In the 1300s, Tartar (Mongol) warriors besieged the Crimean city of Kaffa. During the siege, many Tartars died at the hands of plague, and their lifeless, infected bodies were hurled over the city walls.

Some researchers believe that this tactic may have been responsible for the spread of Black Death plague into Europe. If so, this early use of biological warfare caused the eventual deaths of around 25 million Europeans.

This is a prime example of biological warfares potential scope, unpredictability, and terrifying simplicity.

Moving forward to 1763, the British Army attmped to use smallpox as a weapon against Native Americans at the Siege of Fort Pitt. In an attempt to spread the disease to the locals, the Brits presented blankets from a smallpox hospital as gifts.

Although we now know that this would be a relatively ineffective way to transmit smallpox, the intent was there.

During World War II, many of the parties involved looked into biological warfare with great interest. The Allies built facilities capable of mass producing anthrax spores, brucellosis, and botulism toxins. Thankfully, the war ended before they were used.

It was the Japanese who made the most use of biological weapons during World War II, as among other terrifyingly indiscriminate attacks, the Japanese Army Air Force dropped ceramic bombs full of fleas carrying the bubonic plague on Ningbo, China.

The following quote comes from a paper on the history of biological warfare.

[T]he Japanese army poisoned more than 1,000 water wells in Chinese villages to study cholera and typhus outbreaks. [] Some of the epidemics they caused persisted for years and continued to kill more than 30,000 people in 1947, long after the Japanese had surrendered.

Dr. Friedrich Frischknecht, professor of integrative parasitology, Heidelberg University, Germany

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define bioterrorism as the intentional release of viruses, bacteria, or other germs that can sicken or kill people, livestock, or crops.

This can be achieved in a number of ways, such as: via aerosol sprays; in explosive devices; via food or water; or absorbed or injected into skin.

Because some pathogens are less robust than others, the type of pathogen used will define how it can be deployed.

Utilizing such weapons holds a certain appeal to terrorists; they have the potential to cause great harm, of course, but they are also fairly cheap to produce when compared with missiles or other more hi-tech equipment.

Also, they can be detonated, and, due to the long time that it takes for them to spread and take effect, there is plenty of time for the perpetrator to escape undetected.

Biological weapons can be difficult to control or predict in a battlefield situation, since there is a substantial risk that troops on both sides will be affected. However, if a terrorist is interested in attacking a distant target as a lone operant, bioterrorism carries much less risk to the person.

Experts believe that today, the most likely organism to be used in a bioterrorism attack would be Bacillus anthracis, the bacteria that causes anthrax.

It is widely found in nature, easily produced in the laboratory, and survives for a long time in the environment. Also, it is versatile and can be released in powders, sprays, water, or food.

Anthrax has been used before. In 2001, anthrax spores were sent through the United States postal system. In all, 22 people contracted anthrax five of whom died. And, the guilty party was never caught.

Another potential agent of bioterrorism is smallpox, which, unlike anthrax, can spread from person to person. Smallpox is no longer a disease of concern in the natural world because concerted vaccination efforts stamped it out and the last naturally spread case occurred in 1977.

However, if someone were to gain access to the smallpox virus (it is still kept in two laboratories one in the U.S. and one in Russia), it could be an effective weapon, spreading quickly and easily between people.

We have already mentioned the Tartars use of the plague, Yersinia pestis, hundreds of years ago, but some believe that it could be used in the modern world, too. Y. pestis is passed to humans through the bite of a flea that has fed on infected rodents.

Once a human is infected, the resulting disease can either develop into bubonic plague, which is difficult to transmit among humans and fairly easy to treat with antibiotics, or if the infection spreads to the lungs it becomes pneumonic plague, which develops rapidly and does not respond well to antibiotics.

A paper written on the plague and its potential for use in biological terrorism says:

Given the presence and availability of plague around the world, the capacity for mass production and aerosol dissemination, the high fatality rate of pneumonic plague, and the potential for rapid secondary spread, the potential use of plague as a biological weapon is of great concern.

Dr. Stefan Riedel, Department of Pathology, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, TX

As a potentially severe and sometimes deadly gastrointestinal disease, cholera has the potential to be used in bioterrorism. It does not spread easily from person to person, so for it to be effective, it would need to be liberally added to a major water source.

In the past, the bacteria responsible for cholera, Vibrio cholerae, has been weaponized by the U.S., Japan, South Africa, and Iraq, among others.

Some consider tularemia, an infection caused by the Francisella tularensis bacterium, as a potential bioweapon. It causes fever, ulcerations, swelling of lymph glands, and, sometimes, pneumonia.

The bacterium can cause infection by entering through breaks in the skin or by being breathed into the lungs. It is particularly infectious, and only a very small number of organisms (as few as 10) need to enter the body to set off a serious bout of tularemia.

Studied by the Japanese during World War II and stockpiled by the U.S. in the 1960s, F. tularensis is hardy, capable of withstanding low temperatures in water, hay, decaying carcasses, and moist soil for many weeks.

According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health Preparedness, Aerosol dissemination of F. tularensis in a populated area would be expected to result in the abrupt onset of large numbers of cases of acute, non-specific, febrile illness beginning 3 to 5 days later [], with pleuropneumonitis developing in a significant proportion of cases.

Without antibiotic treatment, the clinical course could progress to respiratory failure, shock, and death.

Those pathogens are an abbreviated selection, of course. Others considered to have potential as biological weapons include brucellosis, Q fever, monkeypox, arboviral encephalitides, viral hemorrhagic fevers, and staphylococcal enterotoxin B.

Although biological weapons are as old as the hills (if not older), modern technology brings new worries. Some experts are concerned about recent advances in gene editing technology.

When utilized for good, the latest tools can work wonders. However as with most cutting-edge technology there is always the potential for misuse.

A gene editing technology called CRISPR has set off alarm bells in the defense community; the technology allows researchers to edit genomes, thereby easily modifying DNA sequences to alter gene function.

In the right hands, this tool has the potential to correct genetic defects and treat disease. In the wrong hands, however, it has the potential for evil.

CRISPR technology is becoming cheaper to run and therefore more accessible to individuals bent on bioterrorism.

A report titled Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, written by James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, was published in February 2016. In it, gene editing features in a list of weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.

Given the broad distribution, low cost, and accelerated pace of development of this dual-use technology, he explains, its deliberate or unintentional misuse might lead to far-reaching economic and national security implications.

Advances in genome editing in 2015, he continues, have compelled groups of high-profile U.S. and European biologists to question unregulated editing of the human germline (cells that are relevant for reproduction), which might create inheritable genetic changes.

With future generations of CRISPR-like technology and an advanced knowledge of genetics, there would be no theoretical end to the misery that could be caused. Theres potential to create drug-resistant strains of diseases, for instance, or pesticide-protected bugs, capable of wiping out a countrys staple crop.

For now, however, other methods of bioterrorism are much easier and closer to hand, so this is likely to be of little concern for the foreseeable future.

In fact, to lighten the mood at the end of a somewhat heavy article, just remember that anyone who lives in the U.S. today is much more likely to be killed in an animal attack than a terrorist attack biological or otherwise.

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100 of the best science fiction novels of all time – Mooresville Tribune

Posted: at 11:17 am

y's world. He went on to argue that sci-fi writing, which has long been seen as nothing more than a little bit of lighthearted fun, will shape society's understanding of things like artificial intelligence and biotechnology more than any other sort of writing. Reading science fiction, and grappling with issues like AI replacing entire classes of workers, is an excellent way to help us determine how we really feel before we deal with the same issues in real life.

Fiction can be a powerful tool for helping individuals navigate the real world. Sci-fi is no different. In light of that, Stackerhas rounded up 100 of the best science fiction novels of all time.

Using sources like Goodreads, Amazon, and The New York Times Best Seller list, we've identified 100 books that had a powerful impact on readers. We've included books that fall under the hard sci-fi, cyberpunk, space opera, aliens, and utopia/dystopia categories while steering clear of books that are strictly fantasy (think "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter"). We've also made sure to highlight books from authors of color, female authors, LGBTQIA+ authors, and authors from various countries and backgrounds, dispelling the myth that science fiction is only written for and by cis white males.

From comical takes on the genre like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" to controversial titles like "Starship Troopers" to classics like H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds," dark tales like "Who Fears Death," and new titles like "How Long 'til Black Future Month?" there's sure to be something on this list for every taste.

Read on for100 of the best science fiction novels of all time.

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The key to farming on Mars might be breeding parasitic space worms – Digital Trends

Posted: at 11:17 am

Pheronym, Inc

The parasitic space worms are coming, and theyre ready to kill.

No, its not the tagline for some Tremors in Space B-movie monster flick. Instead, its the result of some research recently published in the journal npj Microgravity. And despite how it sounds, its actually good news. (Spoiler: its not us that theyre killing.)

Heres the issue: One of the many, many problems that need to be solved before space colonization can take place is what people are going to eat. Right now, astronauts rely on packets of dehydrated food that are launched into space either on their original journey or on top-up resupply missions.However, this isnt a viable solution when, for instance, colonists arrive on Mars. As Andy Weirs The Martian suggested, space agriculture is a distinct possibility for providing a continuous supply of sustenance.

But and this is getting ahead of ourselves it seems likely that crops in space could face the same problem of insect pests as crops on Earth.Thats not to suggest that theyll be fending off alien insects (at least, not aliens in the traditional sense), but that a steady stream of colonists from Earth could bring with them some of the same insects that already feed on our crops on terra firma.

Without proper pest control, farmers on Earth risk losing up to 80 percent of their crops. Needless to say, that kind of bad harvest could prove devastating for a developing space colony. Clearly some form of pest control is sensible to investigate. Since air quality is critical in space (being a limited resource, and it not being quite so easy to open a window to get clean air), it would also make sense if pest control methods were biological, non-toxic ones.

Thats where the worms enter, stage left. These tiny worms are what researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the biotech company Pheronym refer to as biocontrol organisms. Already widespread on Earth, these parasitic roundworms, called entomopathogenic nematodes, are not harmful to humans, but are great at controlling a wide variety of insect pests. This makes them a perfect natural bio-pesticide, midway between microbial pathogens and predators. They kill insects using a naturally occurring bacteria in their gut.

When humans are traveling in space and growing crops to sustain themselves, it may be inevitable that there will be pests attacking those crops, David Shapiro-Ilan, a research entomologist at the Southeastern Fruit and Tree Nut Research Station in Byron, Georgia, told Digital Trends. [We] wanted to determine if beneficial nematodes could be used as natural bio-pesticides to protect crops in space the same way they are used on Earth.

For this reason, the researchers delivered samples of the entomopathogenic nematodes to the International Space Station to see how they would fare. They were flown up to the ISS last year with the express goal of seeing whether they would survive and thrive in the space environment, principally in microgravity.

Killing insects in microgravity may sound like a straightforward question, but it is not a simple task, Fatma Kaplan, CEO of Pheronym, told Digital Trends. It seems like we are comparing one condition: gravity versus microgravity. However, microgravity changes several factors.

It turns out that microgravity does a lot more than simply make things float around in space. Water, for example, behaves very differently in microgravity, compared to how it does on Earth. Predicting how an agricultural biocontrol agent will behave in microgravity is tough because so many environmental factors are (no pun intended) up in the air from the behavior of water to the lack of buoyancy-driven convection to, as the researchers write, the required cooperation of two organisms to execute a multistep infection.

All of these could matter when it comes to entomopathogenic nematodes ability to do their job. If adapting to space is tough for humans, why wouldnt it be the same for tiny roundworms?

One part of the experiment was to see whether they could emerge out of the insect once they consumed the host, Kaplan said. One of the factors that control emergence is a pheromone signal. We did not know whether they could produce dispersal pheromone to emerge. The pheromone composition from this experiment will be compared to our product development on Earth.

Fortunately, it turns out that things are looking good. The samples taken to space were then frozen and returned to Earth for analysis. (Intriguingly, it seems that worms born on Earth could return unfazed, but worms that were hatched in space died when re-entry took place.)

As far as we can tell the nematodes performed in excellent fashion and were able to find, infect, and reproduce in insect pest hosts, Shapiro said. There may be other biological control tactics that could be used in space, but this was the first test of a natural enemy being used as a pest control agent in space. We think beneficial nematodes are a good candidate for space travel because they have wide host ranges [meaning that they] can kill lots of different pest species.

In the future, Shapiro continued, the researchers would like to delve further into the impact of microgravity, and the return to gravity on nematode physiology. The ultimate goal is to better understand how to protect crops in space. Our ancestors will thank them.

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Moon Mission Chang’e 4 Finds Space Radiation on Moon Much Higher Than Previously Thought; Why is NASA in Dark? – International Business Times,…

Posted: at 11:17 am

Lunar eclipse 2020: Dos and dont

Several scientists have previously revealed that space radiation is one of the most dangerous challenges astronauts should face during deep space missions. As the United States is now preparing to send astronauts to the moon again, the biggest dangers astronauts will face will be space radiation, as it could cause severe health hazards that include cataracts, cancer and, neurodegenerative diseases.

New Study Reveals Dangers

NASA had successfully landed humans multiple times on the moon in the 1960s and 70s as a part of their Apollo missions. These missions proved that humans could stay safely in the moon for a few days, but the United States space agency apparently did not take daily space radiation measurement which will help to understand how many days an astronaut could survive in space.

Now, a new study conducted by researchers using the data obtained by China's Chang'e 4 lander has found that the radiation in the moon is two to three times higher than the space radiation in the International Space Station.

"The radiation of the Moon is between two and three times higher than what you have on the ISS (International Space Station). So that limits your stay to approximately two months on the surface of the Moon. The radiation levels we measured on the Moon are about 200 times higher than on the surface of the Earth and five to 10 times higher than on a flight from New York to Frankfurt," Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber, an astrophysicist at the University of Kiel and the co-author of the study told AFP.

Moon Mission Dilemma

After analyzing the data obtained by the Chang'e 4 lander, researchers revealed that the radiation exposure on the Moon is 1,369 microsieverts per day which is 2.6 times higher than the radiation received in the International Space Station. According to experts, ISS is partially protected by the earth's magnetosphere, and it makes it less vulnerable to space radiation.

As NASA is considering the moon landing as a first step before the milestone Mars colonization mission, protecting astronauts from space radiation could be the most challenging task that will be faced by the space agency.

A few months back, Samantha Rolfe, an astrobiologist at the University of Hertfordshire had claimed that NASA's upcoming Mars mission could turn out to be suicidal. According to Rolfe, humans who walk on the Red Planet will be exposed to deadly radiations, as Mars does not have its own magnetic field.

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Video: SpaceX first fired a vacuum version of the Raptor engine for Starship – Phone Mantra

Posted: at 11:17 am

An important part of the new SpaceX Starship spacecraft has passed the first test.This is a version of the conventional Raptor engine for use in space vacuum.It successfully passed the first fire tests at the SpaceX site in McGregor, Texas, as reported by company representatives on Twitter.

The vacuum Raptor passed this test about three weeks after it left the SpaceX rocket factory in Los Angeles on September 4, SpaceX announced that the new engine had been delivered to a Texas test site.In a tweet, the company described the firing tests as complete.Its unclear how long the burn lasted: the tweet only includes a 15-second video that dims to black while the vacuum Raptor is still running.

This variant of the Raptor is similar to the conventional version of the engine but has a much larger nozzle, which improves efficiency in space environments. According to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, Starship will use three Raptor engines of each variant.

These six engines will power the Starship 50 meters high, delivering it over long distances, for example, to the Moon or Mars.The transport ship will be powerful enough to lift off the surface of these two celestial bodies, but it will need help to escape from the Earths gravity well.Therefore Starship will leave our planet on a giant rocket called Super Heavy, which will be propelled by about 30 conventional versions of Raptor engines.

SpaceX said both Super Heavy and Starship can be fully and quickly reused.Musk suggests that the combination of a spacecraft and a super-heavy launch vehicle will reduce the cost of space travel so much that it will make ambitious plans like the colonization of Mars economically feasible.

SpaceX is working on the final version of Starship, rolling around a series of prototypes.Recently, single-engine SN5 and SN6 have passed test jumps to an altitude of about 150 meters, and a three-engine SN8 is preparing for its own flight to an altitude of 20 kilometers in the near future.

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Engineers may have solved the problem of artificial gravity for space habitats – Digital Trends

Posted: at 11:17 am

There is less gravity in space than there is here on Earth, which could be one of many challenges for the long-term viability (or, at the least, convenience) of space habitats for future galactic colonists. One way to get around this, scientists and engineers have posited, would be to build artificial space habitats that rotate around an axis in order to simulate gravity. The problem with this is that if they get the calculations wrong, inhabitants heads and feet would experience different gravitational pulls, likely resulting in a kind of motion sickness that would have space colonists reaching repeatedly for their vomit bags.

Thats one problem that researchers from Texas A&M University may have solved in a new paper describing a potential orbital space habitat of the future. In it, they discuss the radius required to avoid creating this effect in a concentric, cylinder-shaped habitat they refer to as Space Village One. They also describe the appropriate rotational speed of such a hypothetical space habit that would help occupants avoid motion sickness.

As Universe Today points out, the acceptable upper limit of rotational speed (less than 4 RPM) results in a radius of 56 meters, or 184 feet, which is the approximate height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. This could dictate the dimensions of such a future space habitat, which would present an alternative to building on planets like Mars. If this is correct, it could enable space habitats where people could live with simulated gravity from centrifugal force and without suffering terrible nausea. They suggest such a habitat could eventually accommodate up to 8,000 people.

In the same paper, the researchers also discuss other issues, such as radiation protection. They suggest a protective outer layer of water and a hefty chunk of rock five meters, or 16 feet, thick. As they write in an abstract: Based on the human needs of temperature, cosmic radiation protection, atmosphere, clean water, food, physical fitness, and mental health, [the paper describes] a life support system to show the livable environment under thermal and energy equilibrium. This habitat, Space Village One, [could allow] a long-term human presence in space such as space tourism, interstellar travel, space mineral mining, Mars colonization, etc.

The paper, titled Design and Analysis of a Growable Artificial Gravity Space Habitat, was recently published in the journal Aerospace Science and Technology.

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The 12 Best Casein Protein Powders of 2020 – Healthline

Posted: at 11:16 am

Casein is the most predominant type of protein in milk. In fact, it represents about 80% of milks total protein content (1).

Its widely used as a pre-sleep protein supplement because its a more slowly digested protein source, allowing increases in overnight muscle protein synthesis and preventing muscle degradation while you sleep (2, 3).

Casein supplements provide it either in micellar form milks natural casein form or as sodium, potassium, or calcium caseinates, which are more rapidly digested.

Aside from being a more natural form of casein, micellar casein is usually preferred over caseinates because of its slower digestion rate, which sustains blood amino acid concentrations overnight (4).

This article examines casein protein powders based on the following criteria:

Here are the 12 best casein protein powders of 2020.

General price ranges with dollar signs ($ to $$$) are indicated below. One dollar sign means the product is rather affordable, whereas three dollar signs indicate a higher price range.

Generally, prices range from $0.70$1.72 per serving, or $29.96$79.99 per tub, though this may vary depending on where you shop and which tub size you buy.

Pricing guide

Price: $$

As one of the most reputable, high quality supplement brands, Optimum Nutritions casein powder is one of the most recommended casein supplements.

This casein powder provides 24 grams of protein per serving, along with 4.7 grams of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) three amino acids that help increase the rate of muscle protein synthesis (5).

Additionally, ONs facilities comply with the Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) regulations.

Its products are also Certified for Sport by NSF International, a third-party testing organization that guarantees the absence of substances banned by many major athletic organizations.

Pros:

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Shop for ON Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard Naturally Flavored 100% Casein online.

Price: $

Dymatize Elite Casein protein powder is produced using cross-flow microfiltration processing, which helps preserve caseins natural properties and quality.

This powder provides 24 grams of protein, with 5.3 grams of BCAAs per serving.

Its also manufactured in GMP- and sport-certified facilities, further demonstrating its high quality standards.

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Shop for Dymatize Elite Casein online.

Price: $$

Kaged Muscle Kasein Isolate Powder is also produced with microfiltration processing, this time using a cold-pressed filtration method that preserves caseins integrity.

It provides 24 grams of protein and 4.75 grams of BCAAs per serving.

The brands products are third-party tested for purity and potency, as well as banned-substance-free.

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Shop for Kaged Muscle Kasein Isolate Powder Casein online.

Price: $$

Legion takes pride in producing a casein protein powder Casein+ thats made from high quality milk from small, sustainable Irish milk farms.

The brand works with farms that are certified by Irelands Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme (SDAS). Thus, its casein comes from farms that follow the best animal welfare, traceability, and soil and grass management practices.

Its casein powder provides 26 grams of protein per serving without added amino acids to avoid amino spiking.

Its also manufactured in an FDA-approved GMP-certified facility.

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Shop for Legion Casein+ online.

Price: $$

Ascent supplements are known for being the benchmark of product purity, and theyre Informed-Sport-certified a global sports supplement testing program.

Ascent micellar casein powder provides 25 grams of protein per serving and 5 grams of BCAAs.

Pros:

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Shop for Ascent Micellar Casein Powder online.

Price: $

Unflavored casein powders allow you to enjoy the proteins benefits without the usual sweet taste, which is also great if you want to mix it with a savory meal or drink.

This casein powder provides 25 grams of protein per serving and less than 1 gram of carbs and fat.

Its manufactured following cGMP standards in an FDA-inspected facility.

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Shop for BulkSupplements Pure Casein Powder online.

Price: $$

Promix offers another unflavored casein protein option thats easy to blend with about anything you like.

Promix Casein Protein Powder provides 25 grams of protein and 5.3 grams BCAAs per serving. Users report less bloating and stomach aches, compared with other brands although it may have a grainier texture.

The brand also uses third-party testing to ensure the quality of its products.

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Shop for Promix Unflavored Casein Protein Powder online.

Price: $

MuscleTech is another reputable and internationally recognized brand consumed by both elite athletes and fitness enthusiasts.

Its NitroTech Casein Gold Protein Powder provides only 110 calories per serving and 24 grams of protein from a casein blend comprised of both micellar and calcium caseinate.

Furthermore, the protein is manufactured in a GMP-certified facility.

Pros:

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Shop for MuscleTech NitroTech Casein Gold online.

Price: $

Nutricost Casein Protein Powder is another 110-calorie alternative for those looking for a lower calorie option.

Each serving provides 24 grams of protein, and the supplement is manufactured in a GMP-compliant, FDA-registered facility.

Pros:

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Shop for Nutricost Casein Protein Powder online.

Price: $$

Hardbodys Amazing Micellar Casein Protein Powder is one of the few protein supplements that contain a probiotic and blend of digestive enzymes.

Each serving packs 26 grams of protein, including all 3 BCAAs and 9 essential amino acids.

Hardbodys products are third-party quality tested and manufactured in an FDA-registered facility.

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Shop for Hardbody Amazing Micellar Casein Protein Powder online.

Price: $

SYNTHA-6 Ultra-Premium Protein Matrix offers a protein blend comprised of whey protein, casein, and egg protein. Its whey and casein are in calcium caseinate and micellar form.

It provides 22 grams of protein, 15 grams of carbs, and 6 grams of fat per serving, making it the highest calorie option on this list with a whopping 200 calories per serving.

Additionally, the protein contains papain and bromelain two fruit-derived enzymes that aid digestion.

The protein is also manufactured in a cGMP facility.

Pros:

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Shop for SYNTHA-6 Ultra-Premium Protein Matrix online.

Price: $$

Pro JYM Ultra-Premium Protein Blend is another higher calorie alternative that contains multiple types of protein.

It provides 22 grams of protein per serving, comprising 7.5 grams of whey protein isolate, 7 grams of micellar casein, 7 grams of milk protein isolate, and 2.5 grams of egg white protein.

However, its carb and fat contents are significantly lower than Synthas protein blend, with only 4 grams of carbs and 2.5 grams of fat per serving.

Lastly, all of JYMs supplements are manufactured in a cGMP-compliant facility.

Pros:

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Shop for Pro JYM online.

When shopping for a casein protein powder, make sure to opt for a brand that uses third-party testing to make sure youre getting the best protein quality and quantity per scoop.

Additionally, be sure to go for one with a high micellar casein content, as this is the purest form of casein available.

You could also try to stick to brands that use the fewest number of ingredients in their products. This way youll know youre buying a clean protein thats not full of fillers and additives.

Lastly, check the grams of protein provided per serving, which should range from 2428 grams.

If youre looking to bulk up, you may want to go for a protein powder with a higher protein and calorie content even if it has a higher carb and fat content.

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